it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for
one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so
prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and _backfisch_ would
have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows
up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way.
English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in
winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If
you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school
calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen.

The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she
had neuralgia and the _backfisch_ a cold in the head. There followed one
of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter
and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the
combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives
killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite
seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it.
In revenge, the _backfisch_ coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage,"
as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother
made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough.

So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was
worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both
windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their
caste and race, woke with bad headaches.

2

When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She
had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an
unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary
to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she
looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train
for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an
elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught,
and on the line between exultation and hysteria).

Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping
morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan
was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy;
there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.)

Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was